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In this article, we draw on various critical perspectives to theorize neoliberal choice and examine how it has been deployed to market new educational reforms in Ontario. We begin by offering a contemporary framing of neoliberalism that looks at its core elements as well as its chameleon-like tendencies to draw on neoconservative elements as needed. We also furnish critiques of neoliberalism by engaging Adams et al.'s (2019) description of neoliberal "choice" as one component of a larger psychological exercise in support of capitalism. We then examine how the language of choice has been used to position three recent Ontario education reforms: (a) mandatory e-learning; (b) growth of international students; and (c) the revision of curricula according to economic ends. Finally, we argue that the implementation of these reforms ironically has produced less choice for stakeholders through austerity and standardization.

This paper focuses first on the issue of measuring education. When we consider "education and equity," we tend to quantify educational outcomes and compare these figures with others. While it is necessary to consider "equity" (or inequity) through comparisons with others, if we quantify the achievement of outcomes and evaluate the management of the organisation, we fall into a "metric fixation." Next, the paper discusses the issue of meritocracy, presenting a perspective on abilities as social and communal rather than individual. Finally, it discusses the concept of "collaborative learning" as presented by the Central Council for Education Report of 2021. This report states the importance of respecting all others as valuable beings. In order to clarify the significance and value of the presence of others in educational relationships, the paper considers a certain high school discussion situation. "Equity" in education cannot be realised by comparing personal figures on a particular scale. If we wish to realise "equity," paradoxically, it is essential that we do not ask whether we are achieving "equity" through comparison with others. Being equally opaque to one another, being diverse, is essential for the realization of pleasurable "collaborative learning."

The privilege walk is a pedagogical tool used to teach students about often-ignored aspects of privilege. Despite their popularity, privilege walks are under-examined in the scholarship of teaching and learning. This leaves open questions about the efficacy of the walk, and whether, and to what extent, the walk yields different results among students from different backgrounds. This paper critically examines the privilege walk by reflecting on our experience of teaching the walk and analyzing student learning reflections about the exercise. We draw on critical race theory to interpret our data and also to help introduce the concept of slippage. We use slippage as shorthand for systematic issues long described by critical race theorists, such as meritocracy, that are reframed as individual responsibilities. We conclude by discussing how educators might prioritize teaching about structural power by integrating ideas from critical race theory, and abandon intellectual traditions that center Whiteness or the individual.

This study introduces a novel learning management model aimed at enhancing Thai language proficiency in sixth-grade students. Confronting challenges such as inadequate teaching resources and a lack of student-centric, practical activities in current Thai language education, this model integrates six key components: foundational principles and theories, clear objectives, diverse learning processes, social systems, responsive teaching, and supportive resources. The approach emphasizes student engagement, self-directed learning, critical thinking, and applicability in real-life situations. Employing a rigorous research and development (R&D) methodology, the study involved analyzing existing educational conditions, developing the instructional model, assessing its impact, and seeking expert validation. The model demonstrated substantial improvements in students' knowledge, skills, and attributes, as evidenced by the effectiveness index (E.I.) and expert assessments. These evaluations confirmed the model's suitability, practicality, and beneficial impact on language proficiency. The results indicate that integrating self-directed learning, experiential activities, and collaborative techniques significantly enhances language skills. The study underscores the need for adaptive learning strategies, varied instructional media, and comprehensive assessment methods. The model's success in improving national test scores showcases its potential applicability and effectiveness in diverse educational settings. This research contributes a validated, effective framework for Thai language teaching, highlighting experiential learning, social collaboration, and the integration of ICT. Its successful application in Thai educational contexts suggests its potential for broader adoption in primary language education globally.

A political discourse would comprise terminology related to economic development, social welfare, national identity, international relations, and security. The purpose of this study was to determine the function of political discourse and study its role as a mass media that shapes public opinion, and to prove through discourse that political terminology plays a key role in shaping the country's image. Through a qualitative analysis of speeches, official documents, media coverage, and public statements, a dialectical approach was adopted to enhance understanding of the role of language in shaping perceptions of nations in the contemporary global context. The data mainly comprised secondary data, speeches of political leaders, official documents and media reports. Political archives, media reports and newspaper editorials also supplemented the data about Kazakhstan and its historical evolution. The research findings identified patterns, trends, and differences in the portrayal of a country's image and the strategies used to promote or defend it. It also found the nuanced interplay between political terminology, discourse, and the construction of a country's image. The findings would contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of language in shaping perceptions of nations in the contemporary global context.

Educational theory and practice is dominated by mass formal schooling systems, which routinely and unjustly harm many students. I call this stance "educational pacifism," and in this paper argue that Montessorians ought to be educational pacifists. That is, they ought to recognize, understand, and reject systemic educational harm and ensure that it does not occur in their own practice, so that Montessori students are not harmed during their education and so that Montessori education might provide a nonharmful educational alternative to mass formal schooling. I suggest that Maria Montessori was, broadly speaking, herself an educational pacifist, and that not only is educational pacifism the morally right position for a Montessorian, but also that it is naturally a Montessorian position.

This article analyzes how information and communication technology (ICT) has changed higher education in Mexico. While ICT has modified operations and working conditions in almost all sectors of the economy, its impact on higher education remained limited until 2019. In 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic led to its rapid adoption in most higher education institutions. Our analysis looks at this phenomenon from three perspectives. Using an educational perspective, we analyze how universities use ICT for teaching and learning. Before 2020, few students and teachers had embraced these technologies. Relying on organizational theory, we analyzed how the structures and rules of the game changed when institutions adapt to outside demands. In this field, research on the effects of ICT in various institutions shows that organizations can become more efficient, competitive and provide better client services. However, there is little research on whether ICT has caused an organizational change in higher education. Lastly, we use an academic capitalism perspective to ascertain how higher education institutions are knowledge-producing organizations, and how incorporating ICT can change the mode of production from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist one. This allowed us to look at how change affects who owns, manages, commercializes, and profits from knowledge. Considering changes from these perspectives, we conclude that digitalization favors ICT providers, but this however hardly benefits academic staff. At the same time, the national government is unconvinced of online teaching and has cut the budget during the pandemic. As a result, Mexican higher education will probably de-digitalize and return to traditional forms of instruction.

The article reports the results of an interview-based study exploring how internationally educated Ph.D. degree holders re-integrate into research environment in Kazakhstan and how the process of reintegration varies depending on the country of study. We found that returnees from non-Western countries experience greater challenges than returnees from the Western contexts. Applying the concept of "legibility" we reveal that the variation in the experiences is the result of operation of a legibility sorting mechanism used by the state in valuation of the quality of doctoral education of two formerly colonial academic systems -- the post-Soviet and the Western one, which compete as they exert neo-colonial claims on the academic system in Kazakhstan. The state uses foreign degree recognition mechanism as a heterogeneity producing system signaling the stakeholders the desired perception of the value of the different degrees. The differentiation in the experiences results from the sorting.

There is an increasing trend toward regionalization as higher education adapts to openness and globalization. In response, East African countries formed networks and partnerships that strengthened business, higher education, student and staff mobility, and research. This is because regionalization is embedded in East Africa's economy, politics, culture, and social norms. In addition, regionalization is influenced by internationalization and globalization. It promises development opportunities, although challenges are inevitable. This paper examines the contributions of regional student mobility to East Africa's development. We use neoliberal and world systems theories to illuminate the advantages and disadvantages of regionalizing higher education and explain how partner states can maximize opportunities and minimize challenges. Data was collected through convenience sampling of two hundred international students and two staff members in international students' offices. Data analysis revealed that the regionalization of East African higher education reflects historical power relations; it has benefits though founded on inequalities.

The whole, consisting of interconnected and interacting parts that come together for a purpose, is called a system. Every system has subsystems, vitally connected to each other and interacting. However, each of them forms a whole within itself. Generally, entities in nature are grouped into three main categories: natural systems, mechanical systems, and social systems. Institutions established by people form the social system and together with culture, they form the social structure. Educational institutions, one of the basic institutions of society, are in relationship with both the material and spiritual elements of culture, just like other institutions. In this context, education and culture appear as two separate concepts that are interdependent and mutually affecting each other. In our age where social and cultural changes are experienced, the relationship between culture and education holds an important place. One of the significant factors affecting the education systems of societies is their culture. Education is also what enables the transfer of cultures to future generations. Culture is influential at every level of education and education serves as a significant tool for the transmission of culture. Therefore, it is important to consider cultural factors for understanding and developing the Turkish Education System. The study focuses on examining and discussing the relationship between education and culture in a sociological context. The primary method of the study is literature review. The relationship between education and culture, the influence of education on societies, the education systems of societies with different cultures and histories and multiculturalism are discussed to form a whole. Today, the Turkish education system continues to be shaped by the influence of culture. Examples illustrating how culture has shaped the Turkish Education System are provided within the study, discussing the impact of culture on the education system and concluding that the Turkish Education System is influenced by the cultural activities of the past of society.

The Brazilian Amazon is at the very core of current economic disputes driven by different versions of capitalism, which have determined a history of environmental devastation, and commercial and environmental exploitation. Accordingly, we thought about elaborating a study based on the following research aims: getting to know the environments' social representations and the Environmental Education giving meaning to environmental governance concepts, in the context of Pará State's Amazon. In methodological terms, this research was substantiated by the Theory of Social Representations, based on the ethnographic approach. It counted on the collaboration of 121 teachers trained in Pedagogy who work in municipal public schools in Castanhal City--Pará State. We used questionnaire, focus groups and participatory observation to collect data. Based on the main results, the environment's social representations and the Environmental Education elaborated by teachers provided powerful elements for natures' defense aimed at environmental awareness and citizenship participation in decision-making processes. Due to an adverse environmental scenario--of nature's commercialization and aggressive exploitation--the herein approached representations can help the population to redefine its history and, simultaneously, to set environmental governance processes to preserve the forest and the life of local communities.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

This study employs Bernstein's concept of "recontextualization" and Rata's theorization of the "Curriculum Design Coherence [CDC] model" as theoretical tools to analyse the "Curriculum Standard for Chinese Language" ["Standard"] (The "Standard," the "Guidance," the "Plan and" all the quotations from the three policies were translated by me because the official English versions of them are unavailable.) which is part of a new approach to curriculum policy development in China. The study aims to identify and explain the mechanisms through which the Chinese government has "recontextualized" its ascendant political ideals of the "core socialist values" into the country's education system via curriculum policymaking. The study reveals that the "Standard" contains features embedding the core socialist values. This is achieved through three distinct mechanisms of recontextualization: policy propositions, subject competencies and subject concepts and content which operate from a "sociocultural knowledge" orientation. This sociocultural knowledge orientation aligns with the government's strong will to cultivate the core socialist values within the young generation so they become qualified builders and successors of the country's great socialist cause.

This paper investigates the intricate relationship between universities as socio-academic institutions, society at large, and technology. Through a general analysis, we aim to comprehend how a multidisciplinary university mediates and catalyzes the interaction between technology and society. Our examination encompasses both theoretical foundations and practical considerations, examining the ways interdisciplinary approaches facilitate this relationship within the context of technocapitalism. Additionally, we present potential guidelines to enhance the interconnectedness of technology, universities, and society. Based on our findings, we suggest that universities can play a crucial role in bridging the societal-technological divide, but only if they undergo restructuring that fosters the strong version of cross-disciplinary knowledge and robust multidisciplinary thinking in professional training and research.

In this article, we posit a Marxist critique of the way that neoliberal capitalism has thwarted the possibility of comprehensive education. We begin with an explanation of the unique productive capacity of human labour, and the centrality of labour power for capitalism. We go on to show the importance of the education system for continually renewing the conditions and supply of labour power for contributing to the reproduction of the capitalist social order. This provides the basis to argue for the efficacy of the concept of 'over-education' to demonstrate how comprehensive education is inherently an anathema to the logic of capitalism and the interests of its ruling class. The final section expresses comprehensive education as a moment of assault to maintain the status quo. Against this assault, we promulgate the necessity for comprehensive education and provoke consideration of this possibility following an incoming Labour government at the next general election, however unlikely this seems given the alignment of the Labour Party with capitalist interests after the 1980s. Irrespective of the result of politics, rekindling of the comprehensive ideal will come from workingclass collectives, and the struggle for socialist transformation, both within and without the state. It is only through this that the comprehensive ideal becomes feasible in reality.

In 2018 a new, more inclusive concept, of preschool education was adopted in Serbia with plans to implement the change from September 2019 to 2022. This paper examines how the national reform in Early Childhood Education (ECE) was perceived by Hungarian kindergarten pedagogues, who are the largest ethnic minority group in Vojvodina, Serbia. To consider the possible impact this change has on both kindergarten pedagogues and children the research aims were to explore, and to increase scholarly awareness of, potential issues Hungarian ethnic kindergarten pedagogues are facing in their understanding of the new approach. Narratives from Hungarian kindergarten pedagogues who were working with preschool age children were collected. To illuminate different understandings, we propose to apply dialogical self, "I" positions and intersectionality as a fruitful approach for analysing personal and cultural positioning. Findings show uncertainty, resistance, and sentient ways educators interpret the new programme. Findings also demonstrated many kindergarten pedagogues applied a reflexive method of professional practice that remained unchanged for decades. It was demonstrated that in the professional context, the interactions between different selves, and intersection between different cultures contribute to different positions, and storylines, cumulatively resulting in new "we" and "they" positioning. Our recommendation is that further opportunities need to be developed to advance the kindergarten pedagogues' competencies how to deal with change.

This article traces the transnational circulation of socialist reforms in the field of sex education through the work of Monika Krause, a citizen of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) who migrated to Cuba and became the "Cuban Queen of Condoms." For Krause, the overarching goal of sex education was to "teach tenderness" to the people. The socialist state's mission to prepare the population for love, marriage, partnership, and family in Cuba and the GDR involved using complex measures. This paper describes these, contextualizes them in transnational debates, and explains some of the internal reasoning behind their institutionalization. It also explains why looking at state-level efforts to "teach tenderness to the people" matters for a transnational history of sex education.

A shift in primacy from online participatory cultures to algorithmic cultures invites new questions about literacies in digital contexts. This article contributes to the conceptualisation of literacies in algorithmic cultures through sociomaterial and affect theories. It develops a sociomaterial perspective that proposes felt, observable moments of user-algorithmic co-productions of culture as a needed unit of analysis for researching contemporary, critical digital literacies. It then employs this unit as a starting point for analysing the interplay of feeling, critical reflection and algorithm agency across one young adult's self-described literacy practice of 'working algorithms' across social media platforms. Analysis illustrates how critical literacies in algorithmic cultures are driven by processes of human-machine feeling-thinking that cannot be reduced to rational critiques of ideologies, platform capitalism or other forms of power alone. It describes how Malaya became more attuned over time to the affects of working with platform algorithms to craft her community, her sense of self and her sense of well-being. This sensitivity to feeling moved and feeling the capacity to move machines through the use of her literacies highlights how the facilitation of affect is a crucial point of analysis in understanding contemporary digital literacies.

'Continuous meritocracy' was introduced in Singapore to redefine the concepts of talent and ability in Singapore society. This expanded meaning of meritocracy serves as another way to further support the SkillsFuture Singapore movement (Skillsfuture Singapore, 2023b), which was launched in 2016. 'Continuous meritocracy' complements Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) programs, which were to provide adult learners opportunities to integrate practical work experiences with academic learning. However, to fully operationalize WIL in the domain of adult learners, this paper points out that it is vital for the Singapore government and the different stakeholders to endorse the different forms of successes by making them more visible in the society. Utilizing Pierre Bourdieu's key theoretical concepts, this paper discusses the relationship between blue-collar adult learners' dispositions and WIL and proposes an ecosystemic approach that is based on work-integrated (adult) learning (WIAL) to transform the Singapore blue-collar workers' habitus with the aim to visualize 'continuous meritocracy' at the ground level.

Neoliberalism has been the hegemonic ideology that has fundamentally transformed planning over the last four decades. Neoliberalism has significantly restructured pre-existing organisations, such as universities that were initially expanded during the period of industrial capitalism. From Foucault's perspective, universities work as components of the dominant control apparatus to subjectively normalise people to docile bodies in the capitalist society. In planning schools, new planning students are introduced to the discipline and its values, norms, knowledge, and practices. This article explores how neoliberalism has changed planning education and subsequently practice in favour of the market operation by detaching planning from its intellectual and theoretical context, and used planning as its scapegoat to conceal its failures. Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 and the global pandemic of COVID-19, several thinkers, economists and politicians have declared that 'neoliberalism is dead' and pointed to the necessity of a new doctrine to address the adverse side effects of neoliberalism that include social inequality and climate change. Planning was initially developed to address the environmental issues and social inequality that resulted from industrial capitalism. This article suggests that planning education should traverse neoliberalism by retrieving its critical and theoretical knowledge to redefine its role in the post-neoliberal era.

This analysis begins with a general overview of the Great Reset as outlined by Klaus Schwab and other members of the World Economic Forum. It will focus on the themes of redefining the social contract by discussing the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; controlling carbon output and its dietary as well as agricultural implications; implementing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its impact on the very nature of what it means to be human; transitioning to stakeholder capitalism and the concept of multistakeholderism; finally, moving toward greater global governance. These are the five areas that Mr. Schwab and the World Economic Forum have proposed as essential to the success of the Great Reset. This analysis will also address some alarming assertions offered by this proposal.

The "critical" element present in many critical information literacy (CIL) studies shows a commitment to the practical challenge of the power structures that shape current information regimes. In this article, we argue that it is necessary to analyse how such power structures, organised under a capitalist social order with neoliberal contours, benefit from disinformation, scientific denialism and class, race and gender oppression. In addition to discussing how philosophical notions of language and postmodern relativism appear in the present time, our main theoretical objective is to highlight some thoughts of Hegel, Marx and Bloch on the notions of dialectics, praxis and concrete utopia, aiming to contribute to strengthen the critical element that names and distinguishes CIL as a field of inquiry in library and information studies.

The aim of this study is to contribute to a pragmatic understanding of critical information literacy (CIL) by positioning it as a context-specific interpersonal practice. Using phenomenography to explore how information work is experienced by social workers in social and health care settings, this paper provides an example of critical information practice that can be used to operationalise and activate CIL as a theory and inform approaches to critical pedagogy. CIL as a concept is generally theorised, practiced, and taught in academic contexts, and relatively few examples of how theory can be defined and put into practice outside a classroom setting are available. This study builds on our understanding of CIL by exploring professional information practice and suggests a model for teaching to engage learners in connecting information to action in social systems.

The pedagogical realm expands and goes beyond the four walls of a classroom. It becomes omnipresent. However, there are spheres where it displays overtly its political character such as in the functioning of political organisations. In these organisations the relationship of the leader and cadre or the institutional form of politics and the masses that it seeks to include is constituted through a prolonged pedagogical process. This process is defined through a relationship that revolves around exclusion, inclusion and framing of an institutional structure vis-à-vis the masses. Rosa Luxemburg and Paulo Freire in their own ways reflected on these relationships either directly or their writings can be read to understand the making of political pedagogy in South Asian context, more specifically India.

If we live in a knowledge economy (Ford, 2021), then information literacy is a key to understanding the world and how we can shape it. Recently, there has been a renewed focus on information literacy (IL) as it pertains to misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda in both academics and popular media. However, most of the attention has been placed on outrageous claims and wild, often bigoted, conspiracy theories; very little attention has been paid to the more commonplace disinformation campaigns that support hegemony. This paper serves as both a brief recap of how we got here, but more so as a call to move beyond merely being critical, in the Frankfurt School sense, and taking a more revolutionary stand against the underlying cause of this disinformation: capitalism. What information is produced, how it is disseminated and promoted, how it is accessed, and how it is framed is determined by who owns and controls the methods of production and dissemination and within a capitalist system, such as the United States, the "who" are capitalists. Any attempts to understand information without acknowledging and compensating for that fact can never achieve its aim. Therefore, we need revolutionary information literacy to cut through the hegemonic veneer. Building on Freire's definition of literacy, revolutionary information literacy uses historical and dialectical materialism as the analytical lens to understand information and the context around it.

Primary and secondary education under capitalism serves as an ideological apparatus to construct productive workers who will participate in the extractive economy and consent to their own exploitation. However, some school children are marked as deficient--impaired, disabled, and mad--incapable of being good workers who facilitate capitalist accumulation. Just as capital banishes incapacitated workers to the reserve army of labor, so too do school children learn to "surplus" and "disable" their peers who do not meet school norms. In this paper, I use a revolutionary Marxist perspective to analyze empirical data from a grade 1 United States classroom where students were teasing a neurodivergent classmate and excluding her from participation. I explore how the teacher intervened by using critical literacy to design a curricular unit on hidden disabilities that would engage her students in transformative, disability justice, and how students built a community around their disabled peers. Along the way, I explore how disability is a relation under capitalism rather than an identity; how nature gives us diverse bodyminds but it is capitalism that disables us; how the education system in capitalist societies is a vehicle for the dissemination of ruling class ideologies of productivity; how some school children are surplused and labeled as incapable of being good workers who facilitate capitalist accumulation; and possible solutions--what educators, parents, caregivers, and others can do about it.

This critical interpretive paper deploys Walter Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge concept to examine higher education internationalisation in Kazakhstan. Amidst growing concerns about economic and environmental sustainability, elitism and cognitive justice, among other critical issues, internationalisation remains a vital government policy. By tracing Kazakhstan's development since independence from the Soviet Union and focusing on key higher education development policy frameworks, the paper argues and illustrates that: (1) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan promotes a specific representation of the world that is considered universal and modern; (2) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan illustrates the existing hierarchical global higher education system that is dominated by the West as centres of knowledge and learning while allocating other countries peripheral roles; and (3) the geopolitics of knowledge concept enables the reading of higher education internationalisation beyond what is knowledge to who, why and where knowledge is produced. The data for this paper came from a qualitative study that involved 15 semi-structured interviews with graduates who studied abroad at Western universities through the government-sponsored Bolashak Scholarship. Three focus group sessions with 21 graduate students at Nazarbayev University complemented the interviews. The qualitative data suggest that Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge offers a close-to-perfect description of the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan. The conclusion drawn from this post-Soviet study is the universalisation of Western knowledge as nations utilise it for meaningful development, despite decolonial and cognitive justice concerns.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the complexities and connections between women, femme, and nonbinary (WFN) collective social entrepreneurs, social movement learning (SML), and critical participatory action research (CPAR) within the fields of adult education (AE) and human resource development (HRD). WFN collective social entrepreneurship serves as a reaction and solution to system failures, by creating supportive learning environments. We discuss the potential of social movement learning (SML) in these collectives, offering marginalized learners opportunities for skill development, knowledge sharing, and social impact efforts. This paper proposes using CPAR as a research approach to support social movements and amplify marginalized voices. CPAR can illuminate the development and learning networks of WFN social entrepreneur collectives and emphasize the importance of inclusive and intersectional approaches in entrepreneurial education and research within AE/HRD.

This study explores the influence of educational ideologies and practices of donor countries on the educational systems in recipient countries in the context of international cooperation. Previous research on international education cooperation has focused on international cooperation policies, ignoring the educational systems of both donor and recipient countries. This study seeks to fill this gap by examining how Japan's dualistic model of inclusive education is reflected in the Strengthening Teachers' Ability and Reasonable Treatments for Children with Disabilities (START) project in Mongolia. This study reviews the literature on inclusive education in Japan and Mongolia, and analyzes documents produced through the project. It finds that despite some instances of inclusive practices in Japanese schools, special needs education in Japan is still predicated on individualized and medicalized approaches to disabilities. Conversely, Mongolia has struggled to provide children with disabilities with accessible and quality schooling since its transition from a socialist to a capitalist regime in the early 1990s. The START project aims to identify children's disabilities as early as possible, provide individualized support and guidance, and develop educational settings that allow the inclusion of children with disabilities in their peer groups. In implementing the project, Japanese-style inclusive education is negotiated between Mongolian teachers and officials rather than imposed by Japanese experts. By embracing the dualistic nature of Japanese inclusive education, Mongolia can better promote the ideal of inclusion for all children.

Purpose: Although California school discipline policy changes over the past decade have resulted in significant drops in suspension rates, scholars have found that racial disproportionality in punitive discipline persists for Black, Indigenous, and at times Latinx students. This study utilizes racial capitalism as an analytical framework to examine the mechanisms and justifications for racially disproportionate discipline across three distinct California political economies. Research Methods/Approach: Drawing on a subset of qualitative comparative case study data of five schools taken from a larger 5-year study of 31 schools in 17 California districts with distinct racial and economic composition, we investigate the phenomena of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx student disposability--those who continue to experience exclusion in a time of progressive school discipline reform. Findings: We find that (1) student disposability through discipline was not only intertwined with dominant local narratives about racial groups but also tied to a larger system of racial capitalism reliant on the racialized differentiation of students within every geographical location, and (2) when progressive alternative approaches to discipline fail, these reforms uncover rooted antiblackness, anti-indigeneity, and a gang imaginary such that students who fail or refuse to assimilate to the underlying labor-sorting function of US schools are considered disposable. Implications: Our findings highlight the need to center and elevate disposable youth brilliance in decision making, the importance of building collective movements against racial capitalism's grip on schools, and the obligation to build education beyond racial capitalism.

Baima Tibetan folk songs are an integral part of the Baima Tibetan music culture. They are performed in diverse styles, including solo, duet, lead singing, round singing, and chorus. The objective of the study was to explore the significance of Baima Tibetan folk songs as a resource for literacy education in Chinese music history. By engaging with key informants divided into three groups -- scholar informants, casual informants, and general informants. The result of this study reveals that ritual music holds deep roots in religious beliefs and is performed during sacrificial ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, and funeral ceremonies. Dance music culture reflects the collective nature and community cohesion of the Baima people, with dances like the fire circle dance serving as prominent expressions. Folk songs encompass a wide range of themes, including labor, wine, wedding, and love, showcasing the diverse musical expressions within Baima Tibetan society. The unique rituals, dances, and songs of the Baima people contribute significantly to the preservation and celebration of their rich cultural heritage. This study highlights the educational potential of Baima Tibetan folk songs as valuable resources for promoting literacy and understanding in the context of Chinese music history.

College students are reflective of a culturally diverse population and hold a wide range of cultural identities. As such, faculty and campus activities professionals alike, are constantly striving to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Socioeconomic status (SES) and social class are cultural variables that need more attention in higher education settings. Given that SES and social class are determinants of social power (APA, 2007), it is crucial to provide undergraduate students with focused learning experiences on these variables and how they influence identity development. Authors utilized Star Power, an educational game, to mimic three tiers of a capitalistic economy in the classroom. Qualitative data analyses suggested themes of dominance and striving for dominance across all groups. Implications for experiential learning in the classroom, multicultural education, diversity learning through campus outreach activities, and research are discussed.

One of the critical issues facing Historians today has been the emergence of Strong State regimes and the politicized pseudo history they produce in countries claiming to adhere to democratic norms. The attack on the Capital of the United States was based on a series of lies about voter fraud supported by President Donald Trump and members of Congress. Countering ideology based on a complete disregard for truth is now of paramount importance in the United States. This paper studies Trump's promise to Make America Great Again (MAGA) as a further evolution of Lost Cause mythos that began after the Civil War. The original story casts the enfranchisement of African Americans as a failure touting white supremacy and the righteousness of Jim Crow laws. How can History teachers counter these highly politicized myths? I suggest that the methodology of our profession may provide us with some important tools. John Dewey underscored the importance of critical inquiry to the preservation and advancement of democracy. Teaching students how to think historically goes a long way in the process of producing citizenry who are ready to participate in civil society. To that end I conclude this essay with a course that I teach entitled "Witches, Aliens, and Other Enemies." The course is designed to set moments of mass hysteria and paranoia in the American narrative against the background of reason and rational legal law utilizing the Salem witch hunt at the end of the seventeenth century and the "red scare" following World War II as case studies to stimulate student exploration.

The idea that children need to be exposed to stories of patriotic heroes has again surfaced in recent legislative activity surrounding education. Often, this impulse aligns with a conservative, moralizing vision of teaching history: the flaws of past historical figures should be minimized for the purposes of national pride and traditional virtues. When nations have experienced moral catastrophe, however, this impulse runs counter to the need to teach for historical truth. In this paper, Bryan Warnick examines the link between heroes, historical truth, and patriotic education. For initial inspiration, he turns to a vision of patriotic heroism suggested by writer and historian Anne Applebaum in her analysis of Soviet oppression. After examining both the value of patriotism and the contested role of national heroes in constructing patriotism, he concludes that certain forms of patriotism can make a positive contribution to civic identity and that identification with national heroes will be an unavoidable feature of such an identity.

As life course research has long recognized, work and careers are what Pearlin (1988; p.259) describes as "durable arrangements" that serve to "organize experience over time." However, understanding (a) the specific impacts of the alienations and contradictions of work and society under capitalism as well as (b) the analytic details of how the processes of learning are involved in the relationship of work experience and life course remain less well understood. An approached referred to as Mind in Political Economy is explained. It is based on a synthesis of several socio-cultural learning theories which allows the effective use of the concept of dramatic perezhivanie. This approach is then applied to a study of workplace learning in the context of a chemical production plant in Canada with a focus on the life history of one subject. It concludes that, based upon evidence of the realization of dramatic perezhivanie in relation to the contradictory object-motives of occupational autonomy/control as well as labour autonomy/control more generally, work-life learning in activity affected the quality of work experiences, the nature of development across employment history, and had carry-over effects beyond work. Moreover, it is shown that work-life learning could play a role in retrieving, reconstructing and making use of early life experience iteratively in the course of biographical meaning-making through the creation and refinement of biographical artefacts across the life course by a process of double stimulation.

National identity is a complex and contested issue, and it is often debated in the fields of social and cultural studies. Museum collections, and the way they are presented and interpreted, are closely linked to national identity. National museums, as symbols of national unity, can manipulate perceptions about dominant ideologies and the individual's place in society. This article aims to deepen our understanding of how national museums negotiate and construct national identity by critically analyzing the theories and concepts of nation, nationalism, and national identity.

This study aims to explore the political involvement of Kazakhstani youth prior to and following the tragic events of January 2022 in Kazakhstan. The utilization of social media played a crucial role in mobilizing Kazakh youth during the widespread protest against authoritarian governance in January 2022. The tragic events served as a catalyst, highlighting the inevitability of political and socio-economic reforms in the country. The study employed the theory of political engagement and apperception of the Internet as a virtual realm of political communication as an investigative tool to examine this issue. The article presents sociological data gathered collected from 2013 to 2022, aiming to offer into the impact of modern information technologies, specifically social networks, on the political engagement of Kazakhstani youth. The theory of political engagement enables the identification of the underlying nature of shifts in youth engagement and disengagement during the post-Soviet era. It was during the crisis that notable upsurge in political activity among young people became apparent. A comparison of the data gathered by various sociological centers, employing the respondent interviews, reveals contrasting trends. On the one hand, there is an increase in the activity of expressing personal opinions on social networks. On the other hand, there is a growing detachment from political participation, such as voting in elections and engaging in party memberships, among others. The findings of the study revealed that the political moods of Kazakhstani youth persist after January 2022 without undergoing a transformative shift toward increased party and movement affiliations, active involvement in election campaigns, and voting. Instead, protest sentiments are once again becoming dormant, which helps to explain the political absenteeism observed among many young individuals.

Purpose: This article maps the rise of venture philanthropy in public education in Australia, exploring how policy networks mobilize high-level systemic reform and governance technologies. This is "philanthrocapitalism," a fundamental shift for policy mobility and modes of redistribution. Design/Approach/Methods: Drawing upon network ethnography, I focus on a node called Social Ventures Australia (SVA), an organization committed to revolutionizing venture philanthropy in Australian education reform. SVA, the brainchild of McKinsey & Company and multinational corporations, is a useful example to map how venture philanthropy leverages resources and, in the process, fundamentally changes the shape, functionality, and form of traditional government. Findings: SVA has successfully advocated for several intermediaries, such as an evidence broker (Evidence for Learning), a national charity (Schools Plus), and a national education research institute (Australian Education Research Organisation). Overlapping philanthropy and state, the intermediaries stand as a critical assemblage and technology of governance. Originality/Value: Venture philanthropy and the way in which these networks achieve high-level systemic reform is under-researched in Australia. It stands as a critical lever of policy reform in public education. This article will scrutinize and map the way these networks mobilize reform and function as an identifiable form of economic exchange.

This paper represents one of the most recent and pertinent studies conducted in Afghanistan, aiming to address the societal imperative of comprehending the factors behind the fall of the Republic government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban to power. Furthermore, the paper seeks to analyse public attitudes towards the current situation. Employing a quantitative approach, the research utilizes a descriptive-analytical method through questionnaires and the participants include social media activist, students and universities professors, the data collected by online survey according WhatsApp, Facebook messengers, telegram, email and other social media groups from different ethnic groups. The findings of this research have identified several pivotal factors contributing to the ascent of the Taliban to power, including the US-Taliban agreement in Doha, Qatar; political disparities; administrative and financial corruption within the Republic's administration; Pakistan's support for the Taliban; the previous government's accord with the Taliban; ethnic dominance; robust military morale of the Taliban; and proficient war management by the Taliban. Afghanistan, as a multi-ethnic society, witnesses political dynamics predominantly rooted in ethnic affiliations. The majority of respondents express dissatisfaction with the current Afghan situation, displaying significant concerns for the populace. Foremost concerns, in terms of prioritization, encompass poverty; closure of girls' schools; restrictions on women's education and employment; escalation of civil unrest; mono-ethnic rule; ethnic conflicts; emergence of ISIS; ethnic marginalization; violations of citizenship rights; political participation and legitimacy crises; and authoritarianism. Consequently, to address the political crisis and establish a viable system, the research concludes that while Pashtuns lean toward a centralized system, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmens evince greater interest in a decentralized structure.

This paper analyzes the extent to which the use of digital education platforms (DEP), which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, has modified educational policies for digital transition in schools in the context of the last Mexican educational reform (2019), teaching-learning processes, and school-family relations. Our main hypothesis is that the digital leap, in the New Mexican School that emerged from the last educational reform, has considerably modified the methods of educational governance, the pedagogical processes in schooling, and the ways of communication between schools and families, with implications for children's rights. The objective is to identify, from the stakeholders' perspectives, the effects of the growing importance of BigTech corporations in Mexico and of the expansion of digital capitalism, which deepened as an effect of school closures due to the pandemic, and to analyze the results from the gender perspective. The research methodology is qualitative based on in-depth interviews with policymakers and a survey of 70 school principals, teachers, and families from the five educational regions of the country. Our main research objective is to explore the perceptions, experiences, and opinions of women and men in urban and rural environments about the changes experienced since the pandemic in terms of digital transition and to identify the benefits and constraints of using DEP in schooling contexts.

Neoliberal capitalism's demands for efficiency and innovation have greatly impacted North American academic libraries and the work conducted in them, including information literacy instruction. The divisive forces of neoliberalism must be met with resistance, and libraries hold the potential for generating an information literacy praxis where learners engage information with a critical consciousness instead of a consumerist one. Using library labor conditions and the contradictions between innovation and student learning as focal points, we argue that academic library workers should seek to center attention to inequities and injustices in the information economy and scholarly information systems in their instruction, identify shared issues within their workplaces to organize around, and build coalitions outside libraries to transform what is possible for academic labor and student learning alike.

Since the Second World War, racial integration has been the dominant way of framing racial justice. Those who advocate integration believe that racial justice would be achievable if Blacks were given an equal opportunity to compete on par with Whites. However, racial integration was critiqued most radically and vocally during the 1970s and early 1980s Black Power era. While the Black Power movement never coalesced into a unified critique of integration, it radically shifted debates within the Black public sphere. The attack on Black radicalism and the rise of neoliberalism combined to create a condition in which critiques of capitalism and demands for radical social transformation were increasingly seen as outdated, irrelevant, or a promotion of totalitarianism. This paper focuses on how the ideology of integration manifests in Derrick Darby and John Rury's (2018) book, "The Color of Mind." The ideology of integration is the hegemonic system of explicitly or tacitly held beliefs that misrepresents significant aspects of social reality by assuming that racial justice is solely, or even primarily, about integrating Blacks and other racialized groups into liberal capitalism. Darby and Rury reproduce the ideology of integration by framing racial justice as a fight for integration. To move beyond the ideology of integration, we must seriously engage the Black radical tradition, which requires philosophically reconstructing reasonable, but radical arguments within the Black radical tradition.

The book, "Creating Third Spaces of Learning for Post-Capitalism: Lessons from Educators, Artists and Activists" seeks to explore counter-hegemonic social spaces, or what some call third spaces (Anzaldua, 1987/2021; Bhabha, 1994/2002; Soja, 1996) that have been created largely by social, community and artistic activists to prefigure a post-capitalist, multi-racial democracy. Third spaces are ideally sensitive to the ways that various forms of oppression are intersectional. This means that if they prefigure a post-capitalist society, then they must also strive to be post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-homophobic and transphobic, as well as raising awareness about the global environmental crisis. While many groups foregrounded issues of race, ethnicity and class, they also integrated programs to raise awareness around gender, disability, and sexual orientation. In this article, Carol Anne Spreen describes her study on third spaces, including the characteristics they commonly share.